Feelings were running high on yesterday's Call You and Yours (Radio 4), as guests and listeners discussed government plans to make those on benefit do voluntary work. Big Issue founder John Bird was in the studio, and he was terrifically forthright.

"I don't trust the Tories to do anything clever," he told host Julian Worricker. "We who love the welfare state should be reforming it, rather than leave it to its enemies. They're going to be more like butchers." When an American supporter of the proposals spoke, you could hear Bird fidgeting angrily. "I wanted to tear my hair out," he said. "And I haven't got much."

While emails and texts to the programme were "polar-ised" on the issue, it was striking that most callers rubbished the idea. "I liken it to the parish and the workhouse," said one man. "The issue is that there aren't any jobs out there," an unemployed graduate complained. Another caller, on the subject of Conservative welfare reform, quoted Yogi Berra: "It's deja vu all over again".

Worricker handled the calls and guests smoothly and crisply, giving people time to make their points. There emerged something of a kindly, sensible consensus; rather unusual on a Radio 4 phone-in. "Being poor and ignorant and disadvantaged are not desirable," we heard, "but they're not crimes either".